First Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced a state budget plan that strips state workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights, cuts pay and benefits and says there will be no negotiations.

Today he took it even further: He announced he has alerted the National Guard to be ready in case state workers strike or rise in protest. He told the Associated Press he’s been working on contingency plans for months.

The last time the National Guard was used against public workers was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The last time the Guard was called out in Wisconsin to quell a labor dispute was the 1934 Kohler strike by the UAW.

Walker may be suffering from a bit of right wing paranoia about unions. Today when he dropped the National Guard bombshell, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:

The Capitol news conference where Walker announced his plan had unusually high security, with four Capitol police offers stationed outside of it and checking on who was attending the event.

What a way to conduct the state’s business!

Updates

Day after day, tens of thousands of activists have flooded the state capitol in Madison while others have been taking part in actions across the state. To find out what’s happening, follow @AFLCIO and @WISAFLCIO and check out our blog at http://www.aflcio.org.